Homework Help Forum: 7th grade math

Posted by brenda on Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 8:13pm.

I hope this makes sense, but my teacher said he wants all exponents in the prime factorization, the example he gave was, 4^2 he wants 2^4 Is there a simple way to figure it out? for example, i'm trying to figure out 10^4.

• 7th grade math - Anonymous, Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 8:40pm

  Prime factorization just means breaking any number into prime numbers. 10^4= 10,000. The easiest method is to just divide this number my prime numbers until it can't be divided any further. It's a good idea to start dividing with the smallest primes, like 2. 10,000/2=5,000 5,000/2=2,500 2,500/2=1,250 1,250/2=625 -Alright once we divided by 2, the smallest prime, 4 times, we can no longer continue dividing by 2, so we move onto larger primes. 3 does not divide evenly into 625, but 5 does. 625/5=125 125/5=25 25/5=5 5/5=1 -Ok, we can stop now because no prime we try will divide evenly into 1. So we divided by 4 four times, and divided by 5 four times. Basically: 2*2*2*2*5*5*5*5=10^4 (10,000) do 2^4*5^4=10^4 So the prime factorization is: (2^4)*(5^4)

  
  

Answer this Question

First Name:
School Subject:
Answer: